West Wing Writers Workshop

In this course, you will learn to enhance and augment your creative writing ability. This poetry class is one that will assist in your creative writing process and upon completion you will gain confidence in writing some of the best poetry you have written. Materials Needed to Fully Participate: Pencil/Pen Notebook An open mind About the...

Every life holds many tales. Whether your life is wildly unconventional or relatively normal, there’s bound to be something fascinating about it. That’s why the contemporary memoir—everyday people telling their stories—has become such a popular phenomenon. A memoir covers an aspect of a life, whether it’s a short piece about, say, a bicycle...

The best TV shows are addictive, beckoning us to bring the characters into our homes or onto our devices, episode after episode. The people might be cops, thugs, monsters, geeks, doctors, lawyers, fixers, or just ordinary people with everyday problems. The format might be network, streaming, or a web series. As long as it hooks us. Each TV show...

Movies are the modern mythology—the stories we all watch for excitement, inspiration, and entertainment. So many genres and types: drama, comedy, action/adventure, science fiction, fantasy, thriller, horror, crime, noir, epic, western, war, romantic comedy, musical. Larger than life blockbusters or down-to-earth depictions of reality. Tales told...

Fiction is a wonderful conjuring act. With only words and the reader’s imagination, a work of fiction can sail across the world in pursuit of a whale, or time-travel to another dimension, or zero in on a few minutes in line at the local bank, enveloping the reader in a made-up story that feels real.  To pull off this feat requires a balance...

The quiet magic of Goodnight Moon grows into the zaniness of Dr. Seuss and widens into the dazzlement of Harry Potter then matures into the straight talk of Judy Blume and the gritty reality of The Outsiders. Such is the amazing journey children take through books. These stories are a treasured part of childhood and they linger for a lifetime. To...

Are you eager to test the waters of creative writing but not sure where to start, or how? Have you written previously but been away for a while and hope to dip back in? Here you will be guided surely and safely into the writing life. There’s no pressure to work on a specific project or even settle on which type of creative writing you prefer. The...

Are you eager to test the waters of creative writing but not sure where to start, or how? Have you written previously but been away for a while and hope to dip back in? Here you will be guided surely and safely into the writing life. There’s no pressure to work on a specific project or even settle on which type of creative writing you prefer. The...

Add some creativity to your week from the comfort of your own home This long-standing in-person generative, creative writing workshop, which took place in West Hollywood, CA, for 15 years, has switched to an online format so you can now join us from anywhere. Tap into your creative side, write work that will surprise you, and learn a few things along...

Award Winning Screenwriter Jacob Krueger Will Forever Change The Way You View Screenwriting. Rather than imposing formulaic models from the outside, we teach you how to organically “grow” your script, from initial idea, to character, to scene, to act, to the movie you’ve always dreamed of writing. Jump Start Your Writing. Whether you’re...

In the peaceful atmosphere of the Saturday workshop, and with the help of meditations that quiet the critical mind, writing becomes possible, cathartic, transformational. You can write memoir or fiction. Each workshop is focused around an inspirational theme or myth. You’ll write three times for about one hour each time, and receive constructive,...

Every writer needs a good editor to push the work to its best possible state. But your work won’t reach a professional editor unless it’s already in excellent shape. A dilemma, to be sure. That’s why you need to be a skilled editor of your own work. Perhaps your great ideas and stories are clouded by such things as clunky language, pallid verbs,...

On this 1-day Business Writing class participants learn step-by-step how to write more persuasive and effective emails, reports and business proposals and create a more favorable impression of themselves and their organization. They will also learn to sharpen language, tone, style, spelling and punctuation whilst avoiding common writing mistakes. This...

Learn the fundamentals of creating comic strips, graphic novels and cartoons in this class for writers and artists. Discover how to create a strong, compelling storyline, how to create characters and illustrate body language and facial expression, how to match words and pictures. Working in small groups to enable each student to receive individual...

As Rhett tells Scarlett in the movie Gone With the Wind, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” (In the book version, there’s no “frankly.”) Either way it’s a good line, and you should give a damn about your dialogue. Dialogue is crucial to any kind of story—fiction, nonfiction, any kind of script. Bad dialogue can sink it like a...

What do you think about X or Y or Z? And how have your life experiences informed your views on these topics? That’s the essence of a personal essay: viewpoints filtered through the lens of your personal experience. Any topic goes, from the ridiculous to the sublime. Unlike the stiff essays you may have written in school, these should feel personal,...

In this higher-level grammar course, students improve their English fluency and accuracy through engaging activities. Focusing on sophisticated forms such as, gerunds and infinitives, complex sentences types, reduced clauses, and appropriate word selection, students enhance their speaking and writing skills. Activities incorporate a combination of...

Writing for comics demands a “very particular set of skills,” unlike any other form of writing, but sharing traits of screenwriters and playwrights. The key is being able to think in pictures, and visualize your story in a frozen moment in time of still, single images. Over the four-week class with acclaimed comics writer Ron Marz, you will learn...

Improve your writing by reading exciting poets! If you're a beginning reader of poetry or an already practicing poet, come discover the secrets of poetic form, metaphor, imagery, rhythm, and much more by looking deeply into the works of a wide range of poets – from Shakespeare and the classics to the best international, American, and LA poets—such...

Do you want to write for television, but don’t know where to start? Not to worry. Veteran TV writer Steven Peros will provide the foundation you need to begin your journey into the world of writing for the small screen. Steven has sold four pilots (to MTV and NBC-Universal, among others), and wrote for one of AMC’s first scripted series, (which...